Free The Survivor by Rhonda Nelson Page A

it.”
    â€œNo thanks. I’ll stick with my manly shampoo and leave the girlie stuff for you.”
    â€œProbably wise,” she murmured. “It might confuse people if you smelled lemony fresh.”
    He chuckled softly. “Why do I always feel like you’re laughing at me?” he asked no one in particular. “Why do I feel the butt of all of your jokes?”
    She pretended to frown. “Who are you talking to?”
    â€œThe world,” he remarked broodingly, looking down into her lovely green eyes again. She had a tiny mole just to the right of her upper lip, Lex noticed, momentarily concerned because he found that so adorable.
    Adorable?
    What the hell was wrong with him? What was it about this woman that was completely turning him inside out?
    He’d never felt this way about a girl before. Never had this instantaneous level of attraction, fascination and admiration. In fact, he couldn’t say that he’d ever been fascinated by one before. Had never looked at a woman and wondered what she was thinking, or what circumstances shaped her into the person she was today.
    But he did wonder such things about Bess, and those unsettlingly original thoughts combined with this ridiculously powerful attraction were making him more than a tad nervous.
    Because he wasn’t altogether certain he was going to be able to resist her. And he knew enough about women to discern when one was interested in him and, in some twisted trick of fate, she was every bit as hot for him as he was for her.
    The lingering looks, the preoccupation with his mouth, the way she instinctively leaned toward him when she was talking, the way she didn’t shy away when he lessened the distance between them, the rapid flow of her pulse beneath her skin, the hintof rose on her cheeks. The way her palm tightened around his. Little tells, but tells all the same.
    He’d get fired, Lex thought. She was a friend of Payne’s, more than a mere client. And this was his first job. It was lunacy to even consider acting on this unholy attraction, and yet in some dark corner of his mind, he knew it was inevitable, that it was going to happen, that it was going to literally rattle his foundation, and knowing that, he couldn’t simply let it go.
    He had to have her.
    In fact, were Chester not smiling now, were he even in another room, Lex knew he would have already made a move. He would have spun her out, and twirled her back in, hauled her up against him and molded that utterly distracting, too-sexy, perpetually smirking mouth to his. He would have memorized every vertebra in her back and measured her waist against his palms. He would have lifted her up and slid her slowly along the front of his body so that she could feel what she was doing to him, and he would have eaten her gasp and tumbled her onto the couch, where he would have systematically removed her clothes and buried himself in her softness.
    â€œLex,” she hissed.
    He blinked stupidly down at her.
    â€œThe song is over,” she said, looking gratifyingly flustered and short of breath. She backed carefullyaway from him, and it was only then that he realized that he had hauled her closer to him. Close enough for her to feel what she did to him, to confirm any mere suspicions she might have had.
    Brilliant, Lex thought, mortified.
    Still beaming at them and completely oblivious to the massive hard-on Lex was trying to get under control, Chester clapped enthusiastically from his chair. “Well done,” he cried. “Oh, well done!”
    He’d done it all right, Lex thought. And there was no un doing it now.
    Â 
    T HREE HOURS LATER , WHEN IT was obvious that Asshole Bastard aka John Smith wasn’t going to show up, Bess, Lex and Honey loaded themselves back into Lex’s SUV.
    â€œWell, hell,” Lex said as he cranked the motor.
    She knew. Well, hell, indeed. “Do you think he missed this address?” she asked. “Or